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  • From: Mjkoaktreecottag AT aol.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Life in the 1500's
  • Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:19:58 EDT

RE: The info regarding flax processing~ It has been garnered over the past
35 years from research (mainly reading textile books and talking to museum
staff at various sites) as well as my "spinster" friends and mentor so most
of
it is not from reference books. I did this because I was once in charge of
a participatory educational program for school children as well as an
assistant curator for a museum village and wanted what I told the kids or
wrote for
the teachers to be as complete and accurate as I could ascertain it to be;
besides I still spin sometimes and am an erstwhile weaver. However, I'm
happy
to say that I have turned the flax processing demonstrations to my husband.
That process was usually done by the men and boys, instead of the "distaff"
side of the family, because it belongs in the farmyard or barn because of
the
mess it makes. However, as with many jobs considered to be "men's work ",
if
they were not around for some reason, then, as today, many women stepped
into the breach...
maggie
Incidentally, Ginny Partridge, textile specialist at The Farmers' Museum
(Cooperstown, NY) said "heckling"
was used more often in upstate NY (she thought it was a New England term
that came there with the first settlers from NE) than "hatcheling" or
"hetcheling." Interesting how the meaning changed and spread.

For more on daily life in the northern US in the 19th C., I recommend Jared
Van Wagenen's Golden Age of Homespun, and for a glimpse of the 18th C. in
the
area of NY state where I was raised, Hector St. John de Crevecouer's Diary
of an American Farmer. There's another interesting little book for the
early
19th C., this one for then rural northern VA ( I live now in nearby WV), the

of John Janney, a Quaker lad, but I'll have to look up the correct title.
It's a recollection rather than a diary, because it was written in his later
years. There are others out there too, but one has to dig a little to find
them. Wish that there were more that were published. Like MS cookbooks,
there
are probably diaries and other manuscripts dealing with earlier times
in the hands of families, or even unbeknown to them hidden away in attics...



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